


Treading This Water 'Til We Descend

by spinninginfinity



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-22 00:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7411891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinninginfinity/pseuds/spinninginfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A smuggler named Leia rescues a prince named Han from an Imperial battle station. It goes from there.</p>
<p>
  <i>‘Don’t worry, Luke. You’re never gonna catch a prince with a girl like me.’</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treading This Water 'Til We Descend

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Han & Leia Appreciation Week](http://han-leia-solo.tumblr.com/post/145959328129/han-leia-appreciation-week) on Tumblr, for the prompt "AU/crossover".
> 
> Title from "Out Of Our Depth" by Lauren Aquilina.

‘So,’ Luke says, ‘what do you think of him?’

‘You never said he was so easy on the eyes,’ Leia answers. She catches Luke’s expression and smiles. ‘Don’t worry, Luke. You’re never gonna catch a prince with a girl like me.’

***

Leia understands a lot of things.

She understands how to take apart a blaster and put it back together again. She understands more than thirty languages. She understands that when her ship makes _this_ rattling sound it’s probably fine even if it sounds bad, but when it makes _that_ rattling sound it means she needs to smack it just so with the hydrospanner so the whole thing doesn’t grind to a halt. Or explode.

She’s not sure she understands Han Organa, and it bothers her, because rich folk are usually easy to figure out, and he’s made of different stuff to the rest of them.

It doesn’t seem like it, at first, when he acts like she’s stupid and then demands she fly him straight to Yavin, right now, no time to explain.

And then she finds out that the reason for his haste is that Darth Vader shook their destination from the prince’s skull, that it took hours of torture before he gave in, and how the man’s even standing, let alone being a leader to the other rebels, is way beyond her.

She thinks she should probably leave. She should take the money they’ve given her back to Tatooine and hope she can charm or trick Jabba into sparing her.

But deep down she knows there’s no chance of that.

She stays.

***

She can’t pinpoint exactly when she realizes she wants to sleep with Han, except that it’s probably somewhere between the moment Luke drags him out of that cell and right after they blow up the Death Star.

She hangs back a little, mostly out of respect to Luke, who has the most obvious crush on the prince himself, but in time that subsides and she starts to give the idea the attention it deserves.

Han is nowhere near as wealthy as Luke made out once the Empire freezes his assets, but he’s still titled and respected. He’s distractingly good-looking, and if she’s thinking about added bonuses, having sex with royalty will give her one hell of a story to tell people in bars later. Leia reckons she’s pinned down pretty well why it is that she wants him.

What she can’t fathom is why he seems to return her interest.

He flirts with her, the same easy, warm banter whether they’re on a mission or eating breakfast. She imagines, with an odd sort of disappointment, that he might have been something of a playboy back on Alderaan. But then he doesn’t seem to do it with anyone else—in fact, she’s heard people talk about how unavailable he is.

It puzzles her. It also puzzles her that, having figured out that they’re on the same wavelength with the sex thing, she finds herself holding back from acting on it.

Perhaps it’s that she’s worried about his motives—there are plenty of people interested in him, so maybe he thinks she’s someone he can toss aside more easily than the others. She’s a smuggler who fell in with the Alliance by accident, after all.

But he never treats her as anything less than equal. Her age and status don’t seem to matter to him—he asks for her input and respects her views, though he doesn’t have any qualms about bickering with her, always with the unspoken invitation to give as good as she gets.

She’s eager for the whole thing at the same time as she’s completely bewildered by it, and she avoids examining her feelings too closely.

***

Shortly after she joins the Alliance officially, she abandons any pretense she’s making to herself that it can help her and returns the reward they gave her.

‘Why did you want the money so badly, anyhow?’ Han asks her.

‘Everyone loves money, Han,’ she tells him. She refuses to call him by his title. It doesn’t seem to irk him even a little.

‘You’re wrong.’

She snorts. ‘I mean outside your world, where everyone’s not upstanding and moral all the time.’

He shakes his head. ‘Most people love money,’ he says. ‘You don’t, though.’

‘And how would you know that?’ she demands.

He doesn’t answer her question. ‘Why did you want it?’

She sighs. ‘You really want to know?’

‘Sure.’

‘A Hutt crime lord wants to kill me.’

He barely bats an eyelid. ‘That sounds rough.’

‘I’m serious,’ she says. ‘There’s a huge bounty on my head, and one day someone’s going to catch up to me and bring me to him, and then…’ She trails off, letting her fate hang unspoken.

‘Well, I won’t let that happen,’ Han says.

The statement doesn’t come with any kind of explanation of what exactly he intends to do about it. He says things like that a lot, always with an air of authority and finality that seems to dare the universe to prove him wrong. She marvels at the fact that a man who watched his planet blow up in front of him has so much confidence in his ability to prevent bad things from happening, and then feels cruel for even having the thought.

In truth, she wonders if Alderaan’s the reason for it, this defiance in the face of anything that threatens the people he cares about, or if he’s always been this way. Most of the people who could tell her are dead, and so, she assumes, are most of the people who could explain why he might have decided to care about her.

‘I bet my bounty is bigger,’ Han says, breaking into her thoughts.

‘Huh?’

‘My bounty.’ He grins broadly. ‘What, you think you’re the only person who’s got one? You’re in fine company here.’

‘I guess I should stop feeling so sorry for myself, then,’ she says, smiling back.

‘You’re in his debt?’ Han asks. ‘The Hutt?’

Leia takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly. ‘Yeah.’

‘Why not keep the money, then?’ he asks. ‘Take it—we can spare it.’

She laughs out loud at that. ‘No, you can’t; that’s why I gave it back. Anyway, I don’t think it’ll do me much good now.’

He’s silent for a moment. ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing mixed up with Hutts in the first place?’

Leia raises her eyebrows. ‘What makes you think I’m a nice girl?’

‘I’m pretty smart,’ he says, and his tone is teasing, but the look he’s giving her makes her feel… something.

‘And so modest,’ she says, and the moment’s passed, and they’re back on safe ground.

***

It takes a while, but it all comes to a head.

They’re taking inventory of some fresh supplies in a cramped closet, and it’s about as contrived as it could be, when she kisses him, hard and heated and with two years-worth of pent-up passion behind it.

She’s not sure why then, but it hardly matters, because he kisses her back just as fervently, and she finds herself moments later with her back against the wall and her legs around his waist, and she steadies herself with one arm around his neck and reaches down to yank his shirt free from his pants, and—

‘Wait, wait,’ Han gasps.

She pulls her mouth away from his. ‘Change your mind?’ she asks, breathless.

‘Not a chance,’ he says. ‘Just—we should go somewhere more comfortable, don’t you think?’

She smiles. ‘I’m quite comfortable.’

‘Hmm.’ He smiles back at her and gives her a couple of lazy kisses. ‘I just meant this first time should be something more special than a storage closet.’

She blinks at him. ‘First t—wait, are you a virgin?’ 

‘Huh?’ His smile brightens. ‘No. Sorry to disappoint. I meant you and me together.’

Leia feels like she’s been dowsed with cold water.

‘Um.’ She draws a shaky breath. ‘I—I think maybe this isn’t such a good idea.’

She disentangles her legs from around his waist and he lets her down even as he frowns, bewildered.

‘Okay,’ he says slowly. ‘Did I do something to—?’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ she mutters, feeling something hard and raw clawing its way up the inside of her throat. 

‘Do you want to talk—?’

She can only shake her head as she throws the door open and runs, making a dash for her ship so she can cry in peace.

She hadn’t even thought about it, hadn’t even considered the obvious these past two years. After failing to get to the bottom of why he was paying so much attention to her, she’d just accepted Han’s flirting as enjoyable, comfortable, all while stamping down her own feelings as hard as she could.

_I meant you and me together._

It isn’t fair, she thinks, as she collapses onto her bunk. If he just saw her as some quick lay, that would be fine. But that isn’t what this is.

She thinks, as she closes her eyes, that falling for her might be the stupidest thing he’s ever done.

***

She gets really, really good at avoiding him. It doesn’t take long for Han to get the hint and help her out with that.

He’s still commanding, still powerful, still jokes around with other people (gods, she misses that), but she catches him looking at her sometimes, and it hurts like hell.

She thinks about leaving for the first time in years. She almost does, in fact: she’s managed to talk Rieekan into letting her have some time off hours before the Imperials hit the Hoth base.

There’s no time for thinking in between all the chaos of the evacuation, but now she’s parked up in some asteroid crater and Han’s right here on her ship with her.

She’d love to pretend she isn’t hiding from him, but the switch she’s currently fixing doesn’t really need fixing, and she leaps out of her skin when he appears behind her.

‘Do you need a hand with that?’ he asks her.

‘No, thank you,’ she says, very dignified, and then promptly gives herself an electric shock.

He raises his eyebrows and nods at her hand. ‘What about with that?’

She gives a shaky little laugh. ‘Definitely not.’

Han half turns away, and she thinks he’s going to leave without saying anything else.

Then: ‘You know, I don’t know what you’re so afraid of, here.’

She feels a sharp stab of anger and pain somewhere behind her ribs and draws herself upright, meeting his eyes.

‘I’m afraid,’ she says fiercely, ‘that you don’t seem to understand that this—’ she gestures between them, ‘—is a bad idea.’

‘What exactly am I not understanding?’ he demands, instantly fired up. ‘It sure seemed like you thought it was a good idea when you kissed me.’

‘Yes, because I thought you just wanted—’

‘What? A quick fuck in a closet?’ His laugh is harsh. ‘What the hell did I do to make you think that? Was that all _you_ wanted?’

‘No.’ Her admission hangs there for a second. ‘But this can’t last; you know it can’t.’

He shakes his head. ‘Why can’t it?’ 

She wonders if he’s being dense on purpose. ‘Because I’m living with a death mark and you damn well know it!’ she snaps.

‘I already told you I’m not going to let anything happen to you! I told you before, we can pay off—’

‘You don’t get to decide that!’ she shouts at him. ‘You don’t know Jabba, okay, Han? He doesn’t just want money—he wants revenge, and it’s going to be messy and brutal and then I’m going to be yet another person gone from your life, and it’s selfish to—’

Han’s voice rises too when he interrupts, ‘I don’t think it’s selfish to want some degree of happiness after—’

‘I was talking about me, not you!’

‘So was I!’

She stares at him, her breaths coming hard on account of more than just the shouting.

‘Why are you so hell-bent on dying, anyway?’ he mutters.

‘I’m not,’ she says, putting a hand to her head. ‘I’m just… I’m accepting my fate, rather than living in denial.’

‘There’s no such thing as fate,’ he says flatly.

He turns to leave. She reaches for him without thinking.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers.

She’s not sure who initiates the kiss, only that it’s soft and warm and right, that when he presses her against the wall he cups the back of her head and spreads a large hand against her back to stop any of the knobs and switches digging into her, that when they part, the look in his eyes promises more, and she knows he sees the same in hers.

Later she crawls beneath the sheets of her narrow bunk with him and lets him take off her shirt and pants and kiss his way over her body until she gasps and writhes and insists he come back up here, preferably with less clothing.

Afterward, in a blissed-out haze, she curls into his side and runs a finger down his chest. ‘Do you think it looks bad? A prince and a criminal?’

Han doesn’t open his eyes, but his brow creases a little and he smiles, amused. ‘Bad to who? We’re all criminals.’

‘Maybe they’ll think I’ve corrupted you,’ Leia suggests, voice going sultry.

‘Corrupted me?’ His eyes open and he strokes a hand through her hair. ‘I like the sound of that. Take this as your invitation to corrupt me all you want.’

She kisses him and pushes all the creeping, bad feelings she has about this to the back of her mind.

***

Three weeks later she wishes she’d listened to the part of her that wanted to whisk him off to some far-flung corner of the galaxy and hide out forever.

‘I’m sorry,’ Han tells her, his face stricken, as they wait in a cell together.

She has to laugh and the motion hurts her chest. At least if the torture’s done permanent damage, she won’t have to live with it for very long. ‘ _You’re sorry_? I brought us here. I walked you right into Vader’s arms.’

‘Yeah, and now he’s letting that bounty hunter take you back to—’ Han breaks off, swallowing. ‘I told you—’

‘We both know you couldn’t have stopped it,’ she says softly.

He meets her eye. ‘This isn’t the end. And I’m not going to break a promise twice.’

Her insides are cold. She worried this would hurt him but she didn’t stop to think about how much it would hurt her.

She tells him while they’re lowering her into the carbonite, the most desperate, last-chance declaration of love the galaxy has ever seen, she’s sure.

‘I know,’ he says, with such calm certainty that her last thought is that maybe, against all the odds, everything will be all right.

***

‘This is very romantic,’ Leia says, her arms around Han’s neck as he carries her across a Tatooinian desert. ‘It’s a shame I can’t see it.’

‘I’ll carry you again some other time,’ he says, not matching her light tone.

‘I’m fine,’ she tells him. ‘Really. I am.’

‘Let’s let a medi-droid decide that, hmm?’ Han says grimly. She hears a clang of metal beneath his feet, and then the familiar hum of her ship.

She is, though. She’s not dead and, incredibly, Jabba is. She wishes she could have seen it, just for the reassurance, because she’s no idea from where she summoned the strength to choke a Hutt to death, but Han promises her the slimy bastard’s dead and, well, if she didn’t have faith in Han before, she definitely has faith in him now.

‘Luke’s the one you want to thank,’ he tells her later, sitting on the edge of her bunk. ‘Lando, too.’

She feels about for his hand, tugging him down toward her. ‘I plan on thanking you differently to how I thank them.’

‘You’re supposed to be resting,’ he protests.

‘I’ve been doing nothing but resting for a year,’ she points out.

She kisses his half-hearted objections right out of his mouth. She can follow the Emdee droid’s advice later—for now, she just needs him.

***

She shouldn’t have expected that it would last, of course. 

After Luke tells her, she thinks about that journey to Alderaan, about him practicing with his lightsaber right there on her ship, and Ben Kenobi had said nothing to her, and she has to wonder why.

But even if it’s nothing, even if she weren’t half-convinced Kenobi felt the dark side in her and that’s why he didn’t offer to teach her too, she still has to tell Han that her father is the man who tortured him, who held him still while his planet burned.

Talk about corrupting him.

She’s never wondered about her family. She’s always figured that’s all over and done with.

But she dared to think she could have a real future with Han.

She pulls him away into the trees, away from the celebration, and shakes while she tells him.

He looks at her for a long moment, until she bursts out, ‘Please, just say something!’

He goes with: ‘You’re talking like you think I’ll be angry at you.’

‘Why wouldn’t you be angry?’ she asks, stunned that he hasn’t stormed away in disgust. ‘Gods, I know Alderaanians were pacifists, but if you’re not angry now—’

‘Leia,’ he says, ‘I can give you a very long list of people I’ve been angry with the past few years, and you’re nowhere near the top, and certainly not because of this.’

‘Then you’re an idiot,’ she says flatly.

He looks stung, but says, ‘Well, now I’m maybe frustrated with you.’

‘Darth Vader was my _father_!’ she snaps.

‘I heard you the first time.’

‘That’s everything I know about myself, Han!’ she cries. There are tears pricking at her eyes, both because the realization really hits her when she says it out loud, and because he’s still just sitting there being calm about it, and it’s infuriating. ‘That’s the only thing I can tell you about where I came from! Why would you ever throw your lot in with me when my fate could be just like his?’

‘There’s no such thing as fate, remember? Leia. Look at me.’

She meets his eyes reluctantly. 

‘I mean it,’ he says. He reaches for her hand, thumb brushing the sensitive skin of her wrist. ‘You know I was adopted, right? I wasn’t even born on Alderaan; I was picked up off the streets of Coronet City on Corellia. I have no idea who my real parents were.’

‘Well, they probably weren’t monsters that terrorized the galaxy, Han, so let’s say you win,’ she says, tone frosty.

‘Not my point,’ he says. ‘There were plenty of orphans in that city, plenty of decent and not-so-decent people who picked them up. It’d be arrogant of me to think fate had a hand in giving me a cushy life on Alderaan while other children were left to starve. Any one of them could’ve had my life; I just got lucky.’

‘That’s nice, but it doesn’t make your point any clearer,’ she says, unable to resist snarking him.

He sighs. ‘Sweetheart, most of what happens is just luck and choice. This doesn’t change anything. This—’ he waves with the hand not curled around hers, ‘—this revelation—it doesn’t mean you have fewer choices than you did yesterday. If you want to feel sorry for yourself, I get that—I can’t imagine it was easy, hearing that. But the war’s done with, and the people who hurt us are dead, and we’ve both got healing to do, and I don’t intend to start holding things against you that you can’t help.’

She stares at him, her heart thudding against her ribs. ‘I don’t…’ she begins shakily. ‘I don’t know how to process this.’

‘Well, you’ve got a brother now,’ he reminds her. ‘I’m guessing you and Luke can help each other with it.’

Leia marvels at him for a moment. There’s still a part of her that is sure he’s going to come to his senses and run. It’s incredible to her that after everything he’s been through, he thinks of her as some kind of light.

She makes up her mind, in that moment, to prove him right.

‘Ben Kenobi told Luke that when we were separated I was taken in by a couple, and that they got killed, and the few people who knew about me and Luke thought I’d died, too. I wasn’t supposed to end up on my own.’ She pauses. She supposes there are ways in which this part of the story isn’t so awful. ‘I had people who loved me, once.’

‘You have people who love you now, too,’ Han says.

She nods. ‘I know.’

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope people feel that the characterisation is right here as I slightly underestimated how tricky I'd find it—regardless, feedback is very welcome.


End file.
